J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

“Wait a few years,” said the Bishop, finally.

“I just thought now, rather than in a few years or ten years from now, might be better, all things considered.”

Monsignor Gau, it seemed, hadn’t given any thought to the possibility that the Bishop might not be around in ten years. This was comforting, in a way, but it also forced the Bishop to recognize, as he hadn’t before, clearly, that it had been his intention to leave the problem of the cemetery to his successor, and, seeing this as a defect in himself, he took another look at Monsignor Gau’s solution. No, all the Bishop liked about it was being able to thwart the desires of trespassers. That was all. That, however, appealed to him strongly. “Where?”

“I was thinking of the old airport — high, level ground, good visibility from the road. Hilly, secluded cemeteries were all right in the past.”

The Bishop just looked at Monsignor Gau.

“Think of the mower, Bishop.”

When the Bishop noticed where they were in the conversation, he didn’t want to be there. “The cemetery’s consecrated ground,” he said.

“Yes,” said Monsignor Gau — and did not (which was wise) point out to the Bishop that consecrated ground could be deconsecrated and put to other use in case of necessity. Instead, he spoke of the capacity crowds on Sundays in all four churches in Ostergothenburg, and of the parking problem he had at the Cathedral, which he could do nothing about because of his downtown location. “Oh, I’m not at all enthusiastic about moving the cemetery.” (The Bishop hadn’t realized that they were coming back to that, and sighed.) “Still, if it has to be done, it has to be done.”

The Bishop agreed with that statement, in principle, but gave no indication that he did.

“Bishop, don’t say yes or no to this right away,” said Monsignor Gau, and, having offered his solution to the problem of the cemetery, now offered his solution to his solution: on the consecrated ground, once the mortal remains of the dead had been removed to another location, the Bishop should raise a great church and make it his cathedral.

The Bishop said nothing.

“Don’t say yes or no right away, Bishop.”

No more was said on the subject that evening.

The next morning, at the Chancery, Monsignor Gau entered the Bishop’s office saying, “Oh, Bishop, about relocating the cross in the cemetery…”

“Better hold off on that. Yes,” the Bishop said.

That very day, the Bishop called on Mumm, of Mumm and Muldoon, lawyers for the diocese, and went into the legal aspects of moving the cemetery. It wasn’t an easy interview, for Mumm, a man as old as the Bishop, kept coming back to all the paperwork there’d be, as if that were reason enough to abandon the idea. But since the diocese owned the cemetery land, and the graves were only held under lease, subject to removal in case of necessity, there was nothing to stop the Bishop from doing what he had in mind. “Legally,” said the old lawyer sadly.

At the Webb that evening, Monsignor Gau, who was working with Muldoon of Mumm and Muldoon, said that Muldoon, whose hobby was real estate, had learned that the old airport could be purchased for only a bit more than the going price for farmland in the area. “Dirt cheap, Bishop. But renting those big earth-moving machines is something else again. We’ll need ’em at the old cemetery.”

“There’ll be a lot of paperwork,” the Bishop said, preferring to think of that part of the operation. “And, of course, I’ll have to get in touch with Rome.”

This he did the next day — entirely on his own, because of a slight difference of opinion with Monsignor Gau over the means to be employed. The Bishop had been going to write to the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, but learned (from Monsignor Gau) that the Apostolic Delegate was in Rome. “Better cable,” said Monsignor Gau.

“No, it might give the wrong impression,” said the Bishop, who had never, so far as he knew, given Rome that impression.

“To save time,” said Monsignor Gau.

“No,” said the Bishop, and did not cable.

In his letter, however, he did request that a reply, if favorable, be cabled to him, in view of all that had to be done and the earliness and severity of winter in Minnesota.

After ten days, the reply came. The Bishop let Monsignor Gau read it.

“We’re in business, Bishop,” said Monsignor Gau. “You asked them to cable?”

“To save time,” said the Bishop, and their relationship, which had gone off a few degrees, was back to normal.

Things moved quickly then. Letters to the nearest living relatives of those buried in the cemetery and to those, like Mumm, who had contracted for space were drawn up by Muldoon and Monsignor Gau, approved by the Bishop, and dispatched by registered mail. After two weeks, the paperwork was well in hand. During the first week, Muldoon and Monsignor Gau purchased the old airport for the diocese, and the following week it was measured for fencing — galvanized chain link eleven feet high and, as a further discouragement to trespassers, an eighteen-inch overhang of barbed wire. “That should make it as hard to get in as to get out,” said the Bishop.

Next, Monsignor Gau and Muldoon, who had been seeing a lot of “the boys at the Gun Club,” came to the Bishop and proposed an agreement under which the diocese, soon to have more room than it would need for a new cathedral and perhaps a school later, and the Gun Club, soon to transfer its activities to a location farther up the river, would, for the sake of getting the best price, sell off two contiguous parcels of land as though they were one, as indeed they would appear to be when cleared and leveled, this tract to be restricted to high-class residences only and to be known as Cathedral Heights, with thoroughfares to be known as Cathedral Parkway, Dullinger Road, and Gun Club Memorial Lane. This agreement — over his protests against having a street named after him — was approved by the Bishop. So it went through June, July, and August.

And then, with September and cooler weather, came the hard part for the Bishop, although people who stopped him in the street would never have guessed it. Under his steady gaze, the question that was uppermost in their minds changed from “How could he?” to “How would he?” The Bishop didn’t say that he had responsibilities that the ordinary person was neither able to face up to nor equipped to carry out, but he let this be seen. “What has to be done has to be done,” he said, “and will be done with all due regard and reverence.” And so it was done, in September.

Trucks and earth-movers rolled into the old cemetery, and devout young men from the seminary did the close work by hand. The Bishop was present during most of the first morning to make sure that all went well. Thereafter, he dropped by for a few minutes whenever he could. The Bishop also visited the old airport, now consecrated ground, where clergy in surplices, as well as undertakers and seminarians, were on duty from morning till night. Everything had been thought of (Monsignor Gau, with his clipboard, was everywhere), and the operation proceeded on schedule. After twenty-two days, it was all over, and there was a long editorial in the Times .

The Bishop was praised for what he’d done for his town and his diocese, and would do. It didn’t stop there. On the street and at the Webb, the Bishop began to see people who had been avoiding him, among them old Mumm, who said, simply, “I got to hand it to you.”

And the clergy, too. Men who had stayed away from the Chancery all summer came in again, and some of them, perhaps mindful of the assessments to be levied for the new cathedral, talked up the next parish as they never had before and belittled their own. Some of the Bishop’s callers found him not in but at the site of the new cathedral. As long as he had them there, he thought it well to put them in the picture. Pointing to one of the big yellow machines, he’d say, “That one’s costing us over two hundred dollars a day. I don’t know where it’s all coming from, do you, Father?”